Saturday, May 10, 2008

we're back...

if only i had kept a diary of all our illnesses from this winter. it would look a little something like this (you'll notice that i've been the "healthy" one, which means i've been the care taker, which is even more tiring than being sick!):

jan. 1- greta throws upjan. 2- calla throws upjan. 3- mike throws upjan. 4- sarah throws her hands up in the air b/c she is covered in throw up!jan. 5- calla spikes a fever and is covered in a rashjan. 6- greta has an ear infectionjan. 7- mike has shinglesjan. 8- sarah faints of exhaustion from tending to the ill

we made the maybe-not-so-wise choice to get kaiser for our insurance out here. good, cheap insurance...a LONG drive to get to a provider. a drive i'm all too familiar with this year. so this week when greta woke up with gunky, crusty eyes i decided that we were going to just use natural products. i went to the co-op, bought some similasan eye drops and called it good. the only problem is that it wasn't good. it took DAYS for her pink eyes to get better (days of being basically home, which is not that fun for a 3 year old), which then made me feel like a bad mom b/c i didn't just take her to the doctor in the first place. i didn't want to make the drive. i just didn't feel like driving an hour each way, paying a $30 co-pay, having the dr tell me that she has pink eye or conjunctivis, whatever you want to call it, and then paying another $10 for the prescription. i just didn't feel like it. i know that pink eye runs it's course in time and i have used similasan drops in the past for myself and they have worked just fine, but after 3 days of greta having gunky eyes and no fun (and knowing the eye drops from the dr would have worked in one day), i felt bad. should i feel bad? she's fine now, we went to the park, went for a walk with friends, had some of her friends over to play this afternoon, but i still feel bad. i'm just using the excuse that on wednesday morning (the day after greta woke up with gunky eyes) calla woke up and threw up on me. yes, on me. so in reality i would have been a bad mom if i had taken a throwing up baby on a long drive, made her wait in the dr. office and then made her take another long drive home. so really, if you look at it that way, i'm a good mom.

2 comments:

sarah, We've been sick a ton this season too and with bad insurance we found ourselves in the same position last week. Brent had pink eye but didn't want to pay the doctor a bundle again, so he scoured the internet and ended up flushing his eye with COFFEE!!!! Oh what we'll do to save some cash.

We've had a sick/icky winter/spring too! Fortunately we have a close DR and fairly good insurance but we've still managed to spend a pretty penny on DR visits and meds! UGH!!! I liked your home remedy idea and would be willing to give that a shot too! I can't even imagine driving an hour with a throwing up baby, I'd say you made the right choice!!!